Historic Venue:
Opera house played role in lives
of early Gallup residents

ABOVE: Kitchen's Opera House is seen in downtown Gallup in this photo taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s. [courtesy photo] BELOW: Its name, faded with age, is still visible above Zimmerman's in Historic Route 66 in downtown Gallup.[Independent file photo]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — It’s been closed and in the dark for more than a half a century but the mystique that surrounds the Kitchen’s Opera House is still as strong as ever.

Its name, faded with age, is still visible above Zimmerman’s on Historic Route 66 in downtown Gallup. But nowadays, it’s only the old-timers who remember the role the “opera house” played in their lives and in the early history of Gallup.

That legacy now rests with Louis Bonaguidi, the former city councilman who this past January purchased Zimmerman’s and became the proud owner of the upstairs which houses what remains of the stage and the arena that once was one of Gallup’s premier entertainment spots.

Bonaguidi said he wasn’t sure what he will do with the upstairs area. A couple of people have come to him with ideas and while it would be nice to use the space again for entertainment purposes, he said there are structural problems that may have to be dealt with first.

“I’m going to have a structural engineer look it over,” he said, mentioning problems with the roof and a truss that fell down. The floor itself appears to be in good shape, especially for a building that is more than 110 years old.

The windows have been covered up and he hasn’t had a chance to see the upstairs in the light yet. The stage is still there in all of its glory, and he thinks one ring once used for wrestling and boxes matches is still there as well. There’s also a lot of stuff stored under the stage that he hasn’t been able to get to yet but he’s said he looking forward to the day when he can get to it.

He has received suggestions to contact the state historical association and have the building designated as a historical landmark. As for bringing back its former luster, he said that would depend on how much work needs to be done and how much it will cost. And bringing it up to current building codes may be cost prohibitive, he said.

“If I had a $100 for everyone who asked to be allowed to go and see it, I would have enough money to pay these costs,” he said.

Juan Delgado would probably be one of those.

The former city recreation director, now retired, remembers having his 19th birthday at the opera house. It was a surprise party and hundreds attended in January 1950, about a year before the place was closed down permanently.

“It was in pretty good shape,” he said.

Local Indian trader Bill Richardson remembers going upstairs to the opera house in the 1930s and 1940s, and he talked about the fact that there was a ticket booth up the stairs as well as a small private quarters as well.

Back in those days, he said, there weren’t many places for family entertainment in town. The Old Chief Theater was around as well as the El Morro, and the Elks Club had a big hall that could be rented. But the opera house was booked steadily for things like large weddings, dances, wrestling and boxing matches and an occasional play.

The key word here was family entertainment, as there were a lot of other types of entertainment — casinos and houses of prostitution — that catered to the men of this area. Gallup was a rough and tumble Old West town during those days.

As for the idea that operas were held in the opera house was not exactly accurate. Richardson said he couldn’t remember an opera ever being held there.

Roger Zimmerman, son of the former owner of Zimmerman’s, wrote a book back in 2002 detailing the history of the Kitchen’s Opera House, using interviews and stories that appeared in Gallup newspapers to trace the history of the place.

Opera houses were names given to places of entertainment in mining communities like Gallup, he said, adding it wasn’t the first one in Gallup. That distinction goes to the Reitz and Johnson Brothers Opera House which opened two years before, in 1893, by a company that also operated a wholesale and retail meat market in Gallup.

The Kitchen in Kitchen’s Opera House refers to Peter Kitchen, who owned a saloon in Gibson and who died in 1944 in his early 80s. He and another Gallup area resident, Pat Kennedy, who owned the Pavilion Saloon just below the opera house and other businesses that used “women of questionable morals,” got together and jointly established Kitchen’s Opera House.

The first event held at the opera house, Zimmerman reported, was a benefit for Sacred Heart Church. Later a number of the other churches in town would hold benefit dances as well.

By the early part of the 20th century, however, the opera house was becoming known for its boxing and wrestling matches, and Richardson said that the opera house would hold between 100 and 150 patrons who would congregate around a ring that was set up in the hall. In 1903, the opera house showed its first “moving picture.” Admission was 25 cents to $1.

The first graduation ceremony for Gallup High School was held in the opera house in 1901. By 1911, everyone seemed to be using the facility. On Feb. 4, 1911, Gallupians had the opportunity to hear a “fascinating lecture” by Mrs. Florence E. Maybrick on “Prison, Reform and Kindred Subjects.”

By 1912, when New Mexico became a state, Kitchen’s Opera House was a vital part of Gallup’s social scene, wrote Zimmerman.

“The operations gravitated toward the working class and boxing and union activities became leading crowd gatherers,” he wrote. “Fancy balls brought out the social set. Theatrical performances were successful but the facility was clearly not headed towards becoming a center for the performing arts.”

The fights themselves became increasingly popular to the point where in the 1920s, there would be fights being promoted in the local papers almost every other week. For example, in June 1925 local papers promoted a fight between the Insurrection Kid of Gallup versus Young Garduno of Winslow as the main matchup with a preliminary fight being held between Young Gallup v. Dandy Dick. General admission was $1, and ringside seats were $1.50.

Zimmerman reported that Navajo fighters like Mike Tracy of Gallup were also popular. That June 1925, matchup also included a fight between the Battling Wops.

“In those days, many Italians were proud of their slang names and were not offended by being called ‘wops.’ They could laugh about it,” he wrote.

By 1928, Kitchen had changed the opera house hall into a skating rink, but the following year Guido Zecca, who would later lease the Opera Bar, brought back boxing, and the skating rink disappeared. Zecca began a matchmaker for prize fights at the hall.

Richardson said by the ’30s, the biggest attraction was the Chiaramonte brothers — Nardine, Sam and Julio with Julio starting to fight when he was only 15 years old and a student at the New Mexico Military Institute. A 1931 matchup saw Sam (Bonny) Chiaramonte fighting “Doc” Anderson, the fighting Navajo of Fort Defiance.

The big boxing matchups ended in 1940, Zimmerman writes, with Chiaramonte fighting Peter Martin, a Chippewa Indian from Phoenix, in a match sponsored by the Veterans of foreign War and the American Legion.

The last dance occurred in January 1951, and Zimmerman noted that the admission for the dance was nearly the same as the first dance held at the hall some 56 years before — $1.